Copycats Aim For More School Shootings

PORTLAND, Maine (Wireless Flash - FlashNews)  Looking on someone
elses paper during a test is one thing, but copying their
school shooting is something else.

This week marks the one-month anniversary of the Virginia Tech
tragedy and the eight-year anniversary of Columbine, and author
Loren Coleman of The Copycat Effect (Simon & Schuster)
says tomorrow (May 16) through Monday (May 21) marks a peak time
when disaster can happen again.

Coleman says nine school shootings have copycatted
Columbine, and the medias wall-to-wall coverage
of these events encourages males who feel like outsiders around
the world to battle it out.

As he puts it, Were seeing an international flavor
to school shootings, and its a psychological process where
they are competing with each other for body counts.

But dont chalk up movies like The Matrix or
Natural Born Killers for inspiring the attacks, because
Coleman says most gunmen get inspired from Columbine and Adolf
Hitler instead of violent films.